IPPN

Published: 27 April 2011

PRIMARY teachers voted against possible strike action over the loss of more than 600 jobs on support programmes for Traveller pupils and disadvantaged children in rural areas after warnings that the move would breach the Croke Park agreement.

Delegates at the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) congress were told by union leaders they risked the withdrawal of Government commitments not to cut their pay or make compulsory redundancies if the proposal was adopted.

A two-thirds majority of more than 700 teachers rejected part of a motion calling on the union executive to seek a reversal of the cuts with a campaign up to and including industrial action.

However, delegates unanimously condemned the cuts which take effect in September, following Education Minister Ruairi Quinn’s message yesterday that no school staffing cuts in the four-year national recovery plan will be overturned.

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Published: 27 April 2011

A MAJOR effort to increase job opportunities for out-of-work teachers and restore equal pay and pensions for those starting their careers has been promised by the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO).

With dozens of recent graduates among delegates at the union’s annual congress, anger over the lack of work and the use of unqualified and retired teachers dominated debate.

A motion was backed proposing possible industrial action over the cuts to new entrants, and INTO executive member Brendan O’Sullivan questioned why newly qualified teachers should be bound by Croke Park conditions not to strike when they were not protected by it.

The reduction in their starting pay by almost 15% compared to those who started teaching before last January was part of the four-year national recovery plan last November, more than six months after the public service pay deal was shaped by unions and the former government.

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Published: 27 April 2011

THE European Court of Human Rights has moved a step closer to launching a full hearing into a Cork woman’s appeal against a ruling the state was not legally liable for the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of a primary school teacher.

Louise O’Keeffe, a 46-year-old mother of two from Bandon, is challenging a Supreme Court ruling from 2009 that the Department of Education was not liable for the abuse she suffered when a pupil at Dunderrow National School, near Kinsale, in 1973.

Ms O’Keeffe has lodged papers with the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights against that ruling on the basis the state is vicariously liable for the abuse at the hands of school principal, Leo Hickey, whom she argues was an employee of the Department of Education.

A ruling by the ECHR in favour of Ms O’Keeffe could have major cost implications for the state, as it is being regarded as a test case by hundreds of others who suffered sexual abuse while in school.

Full Story: www.examiner.ie

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Published: 27 April 2011

PRIMARY principals will be banned by their union from hiring unqualified people from September in protest at their continued use for substitution instead of unemployed teachers.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) annual congress changed its policy adopted in 2008 that would have seen members refusing to work with non-teachers from 2013. A motion on the issue was amended after it emerged this week that more than 400 unqualified people have been working in primary classrooms for at least 10 weeks of the current school year.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn told the Irish Examiner earlier this week he believes restructured vocational education committees could eventually be given responsibility for finding substitute teachers for primary schools. But the INTO’s move puts him under pressure to set up a system by the end of the summer under which substitute cover can be better organised at short notice.

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